TKT Tip 03: TKT Module 2 - Lesson planning

Type: article

This month Jim looks at a question from Module 2 of TKT: Lesson planning and use of resources for language teaching

In this regular column we help you to improve your answers to questions in TKT – the Teaching Knowledge Test set by University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations. Each month we look closely at one question and find out why the correct answers are right. All of the example questions are taken from real TKT sample exams but have been shortened.

Try this question*:

^{* Reproduced with the kind permission of University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations.}

This question asks you to think about why particular activities might be used in class i.e. what the aim is. To be able to answer this correctly you will need to know about the purposes of different kinds of classroom work – and some terminology to describe the activities and aims.

Oral fluency is the ability to speak naturally at a normal speed and without having too many hesitations or other problems that might make it hard for a listener to follow you. In class, teachers often set up activities such as discussions and games to encourage free speaking.

Peer correction is when students look at each other’s work to find errors (and perhaps help to improve their partner’s text).

When you recycle vocabulary you study items again that you have studied before. For example, perhaps a class learnt about words describing people’s appearance three weeks ago. If today the teacher does an exercise in class to remind the students of this previously studied language, she is recycling vocabulary.

Controlled practice is practice where the students have very little freedom to choose the language they will use or the ideas they will express. Controlled practice exercises are designed in this way in order to focus very precisely on specific language items. By not allowing the students very much freedom (and few chances to be creative), the teacher hopes that the task will help students to learn the particular language she wants to teach. Common controlled practice activities are repetition drills (oral controlled practice) and gap-fill exercises (written controlled practice).

Controlled practice is also known as Restricted practice. In some ways, this term makes the meaning clearer – i.e. the language available for the learner to use is in some way restricted. The learner cannot use any item of language they want to; instead the exercise asks them to use only certain items, in order to focus on a particular point. For example, a grammar exercise might have gaps instead of the auxiliary verbs have and has in some present perfect sentences. The students would need to decide which of these two words to write in each gap. The exercise is very focused so that it works on this one specific language problem.

The word structure is used to refer to grammar. It isn’t used to talk about vocabulary.

So what are the answers?

1(D); 2(B); 3(A)
The option which you do not need is (C.........อ่านเฉพาะที่มีในหนังสือนะคะ  อ่านหนังสือให้เข้าใจ..ครูติ๋ว